OCEAN SPRINGS — One year after Katrina, the Halstead family's home, which Kirk designed and built himself, is still uninhabitable. This is the house where he and Genny raised their children, their grandchildren, and even many of their friends. It is precious to them, and they want to go home.

I have known the Halstead family for more than ten years. I became good friends with Genny and Kirk's daughter, Sarah, when I was a teenager. They have been a second family to me for many years, and likewise my home to Sarah.   

I have fond memories of spending afternoons sitting on the porch, on a bench, or in a hammock looking out over the beach and further, to the water. Out of all those evenings, it never occurred to me that their house would one day be badly hit by a hurricane.

Of course, we all grew up hearing stories of Hurricane Camille and the devastation that it wreaked upon the Mississippi Gulf Coast . In elementary school we were brought to the Hurricane Camille museum in Biloxi and shown video clips of the storm and the interviews with the residents of the area. We all were told that it was the most devastating hurricane to ever make land fall. From that, we all assumed nothing worse would ever come.

So, it was three days after Hurricane Katrina hit that I found myself at the Halsteads' house. Almost every house surrounding them was destroyed.

Kirk's parents' house, which had once stood in front of theirs, was reduced to a slab. I had to climb over the wood floors and roof of the grandparents' house that were piled up to the front door of Sarah's house.

Yet, the Halsteads' house was still standing. It had been gutted. Mud and marsh grass lay like carpet throughout, but it was still standing.

Kirk designed and built their house in 1986. I guess that may be one of the reasons it is still standing. In 2001, they moved the house back from the beach and turned it completely around so that all the windows were facing away from the water. "I think one of the main things that saved our house was that when Kirk built it, he put three-fourth inch plywood over the studs," Genny said.

One year later, the Halsteads are still living in a FEMA trailer on their property. "In some ways it doesn't seem like it's been a year," Kirk said. "In other ways it seems like it's been 10 years."

For the first several weeks, Genny and Kirk lived with friends and family. "At first, we were just grateful to have a place of our own," Genny said. "We're still grateful, but [the FEMA trailer] is small."

"We adapted well at first," Kirk said. "But it's getting smaller every day. It's altogether kind of depressing."

Over the last year, Kirk and Genny's church, the First Presbyterian Church of Ocean Springs, has sent volunteers from all over the country. They have done everything from cleaning out debris under and around the house to putting in new windows and doors. "No matter where you are, there are people worse off than you," Kirk said. "I just thank God we still have something to work with."

What they have to work with is a house that has to be lifted five feet, which will bring it a total of 23 feet off the ground. They also have to get major electrical and plumbing work done before they can even hang sheet rock.

They hired a contractor out of Georgia to lift the house and gave him a deposit of $3,000. All he did in a matter of two and a half months was bringing a large pile of dirt to their house. They eventually had to get the police involved; nevertheless, they only got back $500. So now they have a dirt pile worth $2,500 in the middle of their front yard and a house that still hasn't been lifted.

"I thought we would be back in it by now," Kirk said. "Some days you're just disgusted with it and want to tear it down. And the next day you say, 'Well, there's something there I can salvage.'"

The Halsteads have decided to wait for a year or two to lift the house in hopes that prices and the number of scam artists will go down. They have four years to use their insurance money. Until then, they are going to repair the first floor of the house so they can at least get out of the FEMA trailer.

"We're just waiting for the next step," Genny said. "I thought we'd be back in by December. But I think putting dates on a holiday is a little bit of a let down when it doesn't happen. Now we're just saying, 'Whenever it happens, it happens.'"

For now, Genny and Kirk go about their daily lives as normal as possible. "After the storm, the easiest thing for me was to go back to school and teach," Genny said. "To help those children have a normal kind of day. To get back to that part of my life and not have to be here looking at it all day."

The couple try to relax as much as possible and enjoy what they do have. "For our mental health, Kirk and I got a 16 foot above-ground swimming pool," Genny said. "I think it has more square footage than our FEMA trailer!"

So now their evenings are spent on the porch that Kirk built onto their FEMA trailer. They look past the lights of their plastic palm trees and flamingo lights hung on the trailer. Over their pool, they can look through houses gutted by Hurricane Katrina to the water beyond.

"People ask me why I live here," Genny said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time it's a wonderful place to be."

Katie Carter is a junior journalism major at the University of Southern Mississippi. The After Katrina Newswire is a project of the School of Mass Communication and Journalism at USM (www.usm.edu/afterkatrina). This story can be reprinted with this credit included.